In the age of information explosion, information processing and transferring proceed at any time and anywhere. Notebook computers and laptop computers are highly developed to meet such environment. The efficiency of the modern notebook computers and laptop computers can compete with desktop computers because of improved hardware. Hence, many people always carry mobile computers with them and transfer a great deal of data between different computers.
There are several known methods for transferring a file between different computers. For example, the user may insert a USB flash drive to a source computer and copy the desired file, and then insert the USB flash drive to a target computer and perform a copy action again to put the file in the target computer. However, the user has to carry a flash drive as the transfer medium. If total size of the files exceeds the storage capacity of the flash drive, the flash drive must be inserted into and removed from the USB ports of the two computers many times. Hence, this method is inconvenient for transferring files more than a specific size.
An alternative method is to transfer file over network. Two computers are connected to the network in a wireless or non-wireless manner, respectively. The files may be transferred via e-mail or instant messaging software such as MSN or Yahoo messenger. However, the recipient must passively receive the files and has no choice. It is not even file sharing. Another useful file sharing method is that the source computer may upload the desired files to a FTP server and then the target computer connects to the FTP server to download the files. A more direct method is that the source computer adjusts the access right of the folder or file to be shared for designated user so that the target computer can log in to access the desired folder or file. As shown in FIG. 1, these methods provide a simplified user interface to be operated by the user to select and copy files. The user interface 100 includes two file management windows 101 and 102 for local system and remote system, respectively. Even though the two computers are connected via local area network (LAN) according to the NetBEUI protocol to transfer files without complicated settings, the files located in different computers are still listed in different explorer windows. Such operation is not intuitive enough to allow the user to establish smooth interaction between two computers.